By David Greenhouse
Spectator Staff Writer
Issue date: 3/3/05 Section: News"
"“What’s unlimited is that you can be an advocate,” she said."
Virginia M. Montague is an inspiration and further proof that the elections in Harlem must be rigged, with the dead sometimes outvoting the living. She is an extraordinary innovator, a true Harlem Hero who has consistently put the good of the community ahead of her own interests.
"Since Montague came to New York in the 1970s from North Carolina, she has been active in working with the city’s at-risk populations. She was a caseworker in the welfare system and later became a probation officer before embarking on a Pennsylvania program that sought to help released prisoners find jobs.
“Most of the young people coming out of jail didn’t have any skills at all,” she said of that experience. “We tried to place them, but they didn’t have the discipline or mental skills to succeed in a job environment.”
In part, Montague attributed her decision to run a third time to an observation that many areas of the district are experiencing economic and social stagnation.
Since 1997, “the conditions I see in my community haven’t changed,” she said.
Montague talked about improving constituent service as a way of jump-starting social progress and bringing fringe areas more fully into the district."
I hope she writes a book on the importance of having elected and appointed officials who actually care about the community, like she does. What the elected folks have allowed to happen in Harlem post dis-empowerment zone era (1997) is a shame before God.
Harlem stands at the beginning of Global Warming, unprotected, below sea level, with elected officials who did nothing to build dikes or water walls to protect 125th Street in the event of a rise in the sea level. They were warned and did nothing.
To understand, in the spring from either end of 125th Street you can see the river elevated. It's a thin line to flood the valley, Central Harlem.
Instead, some of the elected and appointed officials propose a restaurant/mall down wind from the stinking, uncovered sewer tanks at North River, lying under Riverbank State Park, where people come to exercise and play.
If Montague had been elected to City Council in 1997, the whole future of New York would have been radically better. Her hope chest is full with constructive possibilities. Her political commitment is to the Lord's Highest Good For All Concerned. I can't imagine her as a cut throat politician, what I'm told it takes to succeed. I hope she runs until she wins again, and again, and again.
I pray the rest of Harlem is as proud of Virginia M. Montague as I am, and will, like in the production THE WIZ, throw off Evillene and dance in the light of healing ideas Montague and other positive community folks are trying to implement to make our lives, and that of future generations, better.
Thank you Virginia Montague and all the other Harlem Heroes fighting to make this world a better place.
Go forward!
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